In the tiny town of Dunsmuir, Calif., Jesse Mattos, 90, was recently reunited with his high school class ring after dropping it in a toilet in 1938. The ring sat there for nearly 73 years, until a Dunsmuir city worker doing some routine maintenance found it in a bucket of debris. He did some detective work until he found the owner, the Times-Herald in Vallejo, Calif., reported.

The worker, Tony Congi, was also a graduate of Dunsmuir High School and recognized the ring. After cleaning it off, he and his crew could make out the year – 1938 – and the intials “J.T.M.” Congi then went to his alma mater, looked at a 1938 yearbook and found the only graduating senior with the matching initials: Jesse Taylor Mattos.

He called an old classmate of Mattos’ who was still in town. That led to Mattos, who was living hundreds of miles away in Vallejo. So Congi drove the ring over.

“It was neater than heck,” he told the Times-Herald.

For Mattos, whose wife had recently died, the gift lifted his spirits.